bah
hmm. after reading chant's last two entries, i all of a sudden feel like i should be writing about things that matter more than paintballing or breaking up with justin...and now i feel bad...becuz i'm marginally frustrated with my life but not anywhere close to what she is...
hmm. so. time for some philosophical writing to make myself feel better =)
i'm reading this book i got for christmas called "a short history of nearly everything", and that's seriously what it is...it's basically this huge book about the beginnings of the earth, geology, chemistry, biology, taxonomy, astronomy, and the history of it all...even though it's pretty much oriented towards the gnrl public and skims over the more complex issues of all the sciences, it's really well written and is perfect geeky knowledge-bowl material ^^ but anyways, i was reading this section today about the mass extinctions that most of the earth's species have succumbed to at some point or another...and as the author was wrapping it up, he wrote some stuff that kind of poked me (sounds weird, but that's the best way i can describe it lol). he made the point that even though 99.9% of the species that have evolved into existence have, for some reason or another, gone extinct, life still goes on. it just IS. (he explained it SO much better in the book than i'm explaining it now...his explanation actually made sense lol). and life exists in both you and me and the plant that's outside my window and the moss that's growing on that plant and the bacteria that are in that moss. it exists indescriminately. anywho...he went on to make this little deviation that even though life is indescriminate in its existence, the way that we live it is different. humans pack their lives with goals; we're always told to do the best we can, take advantage of every opportunity, and most of us live with the goal of getting rich and somehow thinking that this will segue into happiness. moss, on the other hand, while being just as alive as we are, doesn't aim to retire by the time it's 40. yet moss, it can be comfortably said, will survive us as a race by a large margin...
anyways, the author left off there, and moved on to the Devonian =P it's a science history, book, after all, and not philosophy. but that little point about moss aspirations (or lack thereof lol) vs. our aspirations kind of stuck with me. it's like....i dunno....maybe i've got my priorities wrong in thinking that survival is paramount, but it seems to me like the moss is getting the better end of the deal. it's hard to explain what that passage made me think...but here's another example of what he's talking about: he says (and this is MAJORLY contracted, the actual quotation is like a page long) that "if you imagine the 4.5 billion odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day [starting at midnight]...humans would emerge 1 minute and 17 seconds before midnight [of the next day]." that's how insignificant we are. out of 24 hours (1,440 minutes), we represent a little more than 1 minute. another example is if you imagine those 4.5 billion years in your armspan, stretching both your arms out as far as they can go. he says "with a single stroke of a medium-grained nail file, you could eradicate human history".
bah. it makes me think life is futile, and it's depressing...but at the same time, i feel like such a hypocrite, becuz even though i know all that stuff, i'm still going to try and get good grades and do my best and keep up with viola and basketball and tennis and all that other stuff, and my goals are still the same as they were before. it's all just very confusing. it makes me feel like my goals are such crap...but it's like....what other goals have i got?
hmm.
ok.
enough philosophizing...(don't think that's a word but whatever ^^). ironically enough, i'm off to buy new tennis and bball shoes. =)
hmm. so. time for some philosophical writing to make myself feel better =)
i'm reading this book i got for christmas called "a short history of nearly everything", and that's seriously what it is...it's basically this huge book about the beginnings of the earth, geology, chemistry, biology, taxonomy, astronomy, and the history of it all...even though it's pretty much oriented towards the gnrl public and skims over the more complex issues of all the sciences, it's really well written and is perfect geeky knowledge-bowl material ^^ but anyways, i was reading this section today about the mass extinctions that most of the earth's species have succumbed to at some point or another...and as the author was wrapping it up, he wrote some stuff that kind of poked me (sounds weird, but that's the best way i can describe it lol). he made the point that even though 99.9% of the species that have evolved into existence have, for some reason or another, gone extinct, life still goes on. it just IS. (he explained it SO much better in the book than i'm explaining it now...his explanation actually made sense lol). and life exists in both you and me and the plant that's outside my window and the moss that's growing on that plant and the bacteria that are in that moss. it exists indescriminately. anywho...he went on to make this little deviation that even though life is indescriminate in its existence, the way that we live it is different. humans pack their lives with goals; we're always told to do the best we can, take advantage of every opportunity, and most of us live with the goal of getting rich and somehow thinking that this will segue into happiness. moss, on the other hand, while being just as alive as we are, doesn't aim to retire by the time it's 40. yet moss, it can be comfortably said, will survive us as a race by a large margin...
anyways, the author left off there, and moved on to the Devonian =P it's a science history, book, after all, and not philosophy. but that little point about moss aspirations (or lack thereof lol) vs. our aspirations kind of stuck with me. it's like....i dunno....maybe i've got my priorities wrong in thinking that survival is paramount, but it seems to me like the moss is getting the better end of the deal. it's hard to explain what that passage made me think...but here's another example of what he's talking about: he says (and this is MAJORLY contracted, the actual quotation is like a page long) that "if you imagine the 4.5 billion odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day [starting at midnight]...humans would emerge 1 minute and 17 seconds before midnight [of the next day]." that's how insignificant we are. out of 24 hours (1,440 minutes), we represent a little more than 1 minute. another example is if you imagine those 4.5 billion years in your armspan, stretching both your arms out as far as they can go. he says "with a single stroke of a medium-grained nail file, you could eradicate human history".
bah. it makes me think life is futile, and it's depressing...but at the same time, i feel like such a hypocrite, becuz even though i know all that stuff, i'm still going to try and get good grades and do my best and keep up with viola and basketball and tennis and all that other stuff, and my goals are still the same as they were before. it's all just very confusing. it makes me feel like my goals are such crap...but it's like....what other goals have i got?
hmm.
ok.
enough philosophizing...(don't think that's a word but whatever ^^). ironically enough, i'm off to buy new tennis and bball shoes. =)